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Iraqi Police 'Death Squad' Allegations

Posted on: Friday, 17 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By IAN BRUCE DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT

IRAQ's Shia-dominated interior ministry has launched an investigation into claims that rogue elements of its police force have been operating a sectarian death squad targeting Sunni Muslims.

The inquiry follows the arrest by US troops of 22 Iraqi men wearing police uniforms who were about to execute a Sunni male.

The bodies of Sunnis have been turning up for months dumped in Baghdad's suburbs. All have been bound, gagged and shot through the head. Witnesses say the killings are usually carried out by men in police or army uniforms.

While Iraqi police authorities tried to play down the suggestion of official sanction for the murders, Major General Joseph Peterson, the US officer who commands coalition civilian police training teams in Iraq, said the men under arrest were members of the interior ministry's highway patrol unit.

Nermine Othman, Iraqi human rights minister, said: "I think there are many people inside the ministry involved in these deaths or giving the uniforms of colleagues to criminals to kill Iraqis.

"These officials are helping the criminals by informing them on where the targeted people are going orwhere they are living. They are helping them in different ways."

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, welcomed the investigation and said the murderers should be brought to justice.

Tit-for tat sectarian killings have been carried out in all of Iraq's major cities since 2003.

Meanwhile, a report by the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based think-tank, claimed Iraq's insurgency has evolved into a tightly-controlled movement with sophisticated communications and propaganda links.

The report criticises the USled coalition's "excessive use of force, torture, tactics that inflict widespread civilian injury and reliance on sectarian militias" and urges the White House to "hold the Iraqi government accountable for disbanding militias, halting political killings and respecting human rights".

The study identifies al Qaeda in Iraq, Jaish Ansar al Sunni, the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Islamic Front of the Iraqi resistance as the four main players in the insurgency.

Yesterday, a car bomb blast targeting a US military patrol killed six civilians and wounded 11 others Thursday in northern Baghdad's Shula neighbourhood. An Iraqi policeman was killed and three bystanders hurt by a car bomb in Karradah neighbourhood, while gunmen killed an Iraqi army captain and his driver in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Separate drive-by shootings in western Baghdad seriously wounded a local government member, Khaled Ibrahim Ali, and killed a Jordanian Embassy driver, Jamal Salman. -AP

Source: Herald, The; Glasgow (UK)

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